ABSTRACT
Testament was without doubt the first to be translated, and then, when the doctrine had become established the Old Testament was the introduction and the symbol of it, the Jewish books followed."
I t was to little purpose that Greek was the cosmopolitan and international language par excellence, for, according to the just observation of Gaston Paris, there were certain elements in the Christian Churches of the West, who, varying in importance according to time and place, had only a slight acquaintance with Greek, or none at all. How could they have allowed the written text of the Bible, which played so important a role in the life ofthe Christians and which was read privately and in public,l to remain a dead letter to a more or less considerable portion of the faithful? The same necessity, which was at different times to occasion the appearance of Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, and Arabian, etc., translations of the Bible, in good time made imperative the translation of versions in Latin.! The origins of the Latin Bible are in most respects very obscure. St Augustine himself was not at all sure of the exact date of their first appearance. "We can count those who have translated the Scriptures from the Hebrew into Greek": he wrote in his De Doctrina Christiana (II, xi): " in the case of the Latin translators that is quite impossible. In fact, in the earliest days of the faith, the first comer, if there happened to fall into his hands a manuscript, and he thought himself to have some knowledge of the two languages, considered himself at liberty to translate it." "Qui scripturas ex Hebraea lingua in Graecam verterunt numerari possunt, Latini autem interpretes nullo modo. Ut eniro cuique primis fidei temporibus in manus venit codex Graecus et aliquantulum facultatis sibi utriusque linguae habere videbatur, ausus est interpretari." This prim-is fidei temporibus
